When kids realize that there are consequences for bullying, and that they have to stop, they will. (The above goes for physical abuse, mostly. The solution for verbal abuse is "learn to insult them better". They either learn to stop insulting you, or they fall back to physical abuse, in which case, see above.)
That's what my parents did when I was bullied in middle school. They called the other kid's parents, and he stopped. There was one time they did need to threaten the principal with calling the police, and she pleaded with them not do it, promising that the kid was getting psychological help for his issues, and they agreed to conditionally back off (and he never threatened me again).
Bullying is already socially unacceptable -- it's against the law of society. We can solve it the same way we solve every other criminal activity, which is by involving the law enforcement authority.
Edit: Changed "socially acceptable" in the last paragraph to say "socially unacceptable" (was a typo).